Keep Looking Up
by Lena Liz Carter
Summary: Set after 4x20 Worlds Apart. Altlivia and blue!Lincoln (our Lincoln, Prime Verse Lincoln). After a case goes wrong, Olivia Duhnam is scared that she might lose Lincoln Lee all over again. "Lincoln," she said. "I mean Captain... no, Agent Lee. Is he..." she hesitated, but forced herself to finish the question. "Is he alive?"


She realized what was going to happen one second before it happened. They were close to capturing a terrorist who attacked three major cities with explosive rats. It didn't sound very intimidating, but one rat carried enough explosive to blow up a whole building. In retrospective, this should have made them more careful, but they were running out of time – the terrorist announced the time of the next attack and they had a little under three hours.

Lincoln kicked the warehouse door open and ran in first, Olivia covered him. The terrorist was standing there, unarmed, right in the middle of warehouse. Lincoln told him to put his hands up, but the man smiled and that was when Olivia saw it. Something moved in the pocket of the man's hoodie and a white rat peeked out.

Now, when you see a rat, your first thought usually isn't _Run as fast as you can_. That's why it took Olivia's brain that precious second to make the deduction and by the time she was opening her mouth to shout, the man pressed the trigger button in his hand. She had ever since cursed that second, she cursed herself for being too stupid, too slow to see it earlier.

Olivia was lucky, she was standing right in front of the open door. The explosion lifted her off her feet and she flew through the door and in the river outside.

When she woke up, she was lying on cold concrete. Everything was strangely quiet except for a constant low hum and she wasn't sure what happened, but one thought stuck in her brain. _Lincoln. I need to see Lincoln._ A lady was waving at her and she was mouthing something. Olivia tried to look past her to find Lincoln in the strange silent crowd, but the woman kept blocking her view, still talking but not making a sound. _Why can't she speak normally? And why are they hauling me on a stretcher? I'm fine, I just need to find Lincoln._ She tried to ask about him, but she couldn't hear her own voice.

_Explosions can damage hearing, _she remembered. _Yes, there was an explosion..._

The woman stabbed a needle in her arm. _Why can't she leave me alone? _Olivia thought angrily before everything went black.

* * *

She woke up with a scream.

First thing she realized was that she had heard the scream and she could hear the rain pounding against the window.

"Hello, Agent Dunham," said a cheery female voice and she saw a nurse fiddling with her IV.

"Lincoln," she said. "I mean Captain... no, Agent Lee. Is he..." she hesitated, but forced herself to finish the question. "Is he alive?"

The nurse's smile faded. "He is still fighting."

And suddenly Olivia remembered the first Lincoln – she was still thinking about him as _her _Lincoln – being all burned the day the other Olivia first came to her universe. She remembered believing he was dead. She remembered him dying some time later. She never wanted to go through that again.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"About twenty-four hours."

A whole day. Lincoln was fighting for the whole day. That had to be good, he had managed to hold on for this long.

"The explosion shattered a concrete pillar and he has pieces of it stuck deep in his tissue. They got the worst ones out, but they left far too many bits in and they can't risk another massive surgery for another twelve hours. Not to mention that he was thrown into a wall. All those broken bones, maybe a damaged spinal cord..."

At this point Olivia wished she was deaf again.

A doctor came, took a blood sample, tested her hearing and a few more things and proclaimed her good to go. Naturally, the first place she went to was Lincoln's room.

There seemed to be more bandages than the actual Lincoln. And still, she could see blood seeping through in a few places. His face looked too serene under all the bruises and scratches. This Lincoln didn't wear his heart on his sleeve the way her Lincoln used to, but this expression was too still even for him. It wasn't peaceful, it was lifeless. If it weren't for the steady beeping of the EKG, she would've believed she was looking at a corpse.

She felt like she was being choked. As a Fringe agent, she panicked at first, waving her hand around to catch the invisible attacker, before she realized it was just a sob.

"I am sorry, Lincoln. I am so sorry," she whispered.

How many alternate universes were there? How many Lincolns were coming? How many more Lincolns was she going to bury?

She realized that the rain stopped. _Keep looking up after it rains, _those were the parting words of the other Olivia. For the sake of that promise she crossed the room to the window and forced herself to look up.

Nothing. The sky was gray.

She stayed with Lincoln until his next surgery. She wished she could hold his hand, but it was bandaged and she was afraid to touch him anyway. As far as Lincoln Lee was concerned, she had done enough damage.

They told her she could watch the operation, but she refused. The memory of her Lincoln's death was too fresh. She couldn't stand there and watch them fight, while knowing exactly how it would feel if they lost. The surgery would take hours, so she went to the lobby to get a cup of poorly tasting tea.

Charlie was there and when she saw the compassion in his face, she wanted to punch him and run. Or maybe to cry on his shoulder. She did neither. She sat down, holding the plastic cup in both hands and stared ahead. When did it get so cold? And when did it start to rain again?

"He'll make it," said Charlie. "Remember the time when they burned off ninety percent of his skin?"

"Not _his_. I don't think he has ever been injured this badly. I mean, in his universe he would be dead already. The damage..."

There was the choking feeling again.

"Don't give up on him," Charlie said kindly. "He's just as tough as our Lincoln."

"Our Lincoln is dead. From a single gunshot."

"Don't worry, he'll be fine. He'll be stumbling across suicidal bombers again in no time."

"Charlie?" she looked up slowly.

"Yes?"

"Stop helping."

They sat in silence until her tea got cold. She heard a commotion outside. Maybe there was a big car accident. Or a thousand rats, exploding all over New York. She didn't care.

It was Charlie who made her look up.

"Liv?"

"What?" she asked, irritated.

"It stopped raining," he said quietly.

_Keep looking up after it rains._

Olivia walked out of the door. People everywhere were stopping, pointing at the sky, taking photos, some of them were actually crying. Olivia followed their gazes and saw it too.

It was small, only a fragment of an arch, very blurry and the colors weren't exactly right, but it was definitely there. A rainbow.

In the biblical story, after God destroyed all life with the Great flood, He promised to never do it again and created rainbow as a remainder of that promise. Olivia used to imagine the survivors of the greatest catastrophe in history cowering in fear every time they saw a raindrop hit the ground. But after the rain stopped (and it always stops after some time) they could look up and see the sign, that the horrors they had lived through were never coming back. The rainbow was a reminder that history doesn't always repeat itself.

Suddenly everything seemed very clear.

She didn't say a word. She turned around and walked back in. The doctors told her where they were operating Lincoln and she found the room easily. She stood behind a window with her hand on the glass for hours, part of her mind still waiting for the long steady beep, for the panic and the defibrillator, for the doctors falling silent and stepping away, but it never came.

After they wheeled him back to his room, she fell asleep in a chair in the hall. A doctor woke her up hours later.

"Agent Lee woke up. Normally we wouldn't allow any visitors, but he is very... insistent," he smiled awkwardly. "He wants to see you."

Olivia was halfway to Lincoln's room before the doctor even finished the sentence.

Seeing Lincoln's eyes open and his face full of life again made her feel strangely light. She didn't have to bury him. She didn't have to go on without him. She jumped with joy a little bit, but only a little bit. She was still sore from her own injuries and her beauty sleep, after all.

"Looks like I'm going to live," he said hoarsely.

"Of course you are," she waved her hand. "I knew it all along."

"Really? Cause I'm still not sure," he muttered. He was obviously still in a lot of pain.

"You wouldn't dare to die on me."

"But seriously, how could you know that I was going to make it?" he asked again. The doctor wasn't kidding when he called him insistent.

She finally found the courage to hold his hand. He wasn't falling apart any more, he wasn't dying. He was healing and that was the most important thing in the world. He was _her Lincoln _too.

"I looked up after it rained," she said.


End file.
